Originally Posted by
marcolau317
Head for Points in the UK now reporting that there could be no slot waiver at LHR this winter unless EU said otherwise later... if so, guess CX might attempt to keep all their existing slots at LHR at all cost
Interesting, indeed - I'd very much enjoy Cathay having to run significant discount fares so that I could do London for the weekend on a regular basis and making my "donations" towards their recovery. I will happily do a 5 for 1 deal to help them fill the plane, along with HK weekend shoppers looking for new flats/luxury goods. I suppose that may also increase Cathay's willingness to offer a significant discount to key corporates like HSBC too (goodbye to cheap old BA!). I guess the most cost effective plane in the CX fleet would be the A350 (280 passengers), so running that there 5x (or 4x to keep 80%) a day and waving goodbye to First class. I suspect of many foreign airlines, Cathay has some chance to fill the slots due to connecting flights and historic connections to London - but from HKG they will see competition from Qatar who had a similar number of flights scheduled in the past, but a wider network.
As fun speculation:
1. Wouldn't bode well for LGW or MAN, particularly LGW the route should be culled immediately. In general LGW is going to suffer a lot of losses due to this rule
2. Would fifth freedom flights be an alternative. For example Cathay could do HKG-LHR-MAN as a 5th freedom flight, would give them 2 movements through LHR. Or do other 5th freedom flights like HKG-LHR-NYC (probably not that much longer than the old HKG-YVR-JFK).^^
2. They should offer 23.59 hour "stopover" flights (via flight timing) to avoid the horrendous air passenger duty for the ultra keen shoppers. That would be a fun 48 hours.
^^This, along with using LHR as a base for other flights to places like MAD,BCN wouldn't work that efficiently due to the regular delays at LHR and time spent on runways/queuing in general.